Felix Gonzalez-Torres / Roni Horn

Description

Your life is a rare form of transparency through which I have observed the world becoming more present to itself and through which I have become more present to myself. Roni Horn, An Uncountable Infinity (for Felix Gonzalez-Torres), 1996 In 1990 Felix Gonzalez-Torres encountered an artwork by Roni Horn called Gold Field (1980/82), a simple sheet of gold foil placed on the floor of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Gonzalez-Torres was deeply moved and wrote to Horn, beginning an exchange between the artists that would last until Gonzalez-Torres' passing in 1996. Felix Gonzalez-Torres Roni Horn was created as a photographic essay with the intention of sharing the experiential qualities of the artists' work and the profound relationships underlying it. It explores four iconic works (among others)-"Untitled" (For Stockholm) (1992) and "Untitled" (Blood) (1992) by Gonzalez-Torres, and Well and Truly (2009-10) and a.k.a. (2008-09) by Horn-and emphasizes notions of doubling, duality, repetition, and identity. Images of these pieces, taken on the occasion of a 2022 exhibition at the Bourse de Commerce-Pinault Collection in Paris, reveal both artists' radical visual vocabularies, as well their shared passion for language, writing and poetry. Their intention emerges as two-fold: to create a tension between artist, viewer and object; and to grasp the inexpressible, the immeasurable.

Roni Horn was born in New York in 1955. Horn's oeuvre focuses on conceptually-based photography, sculpture, books and drawing. Recent solo exhibitions include those at Tate Modern, Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou, Kunsthalle Bregenz, Kunsthalle Hamburg, Kunsthalle Basel, Fundacio Joan Miro, De Pont Foundation, Fondation Beyeler and the Menil Drawing Institute. Horn's books with Steidl include bird (2008), aka (2010), Hack Wit (2015), Th Rose Prblm (2016), Remembered Words, A Specimen Concordance (2019), Dogs' Chorus (2019), Remembered Words (2022) and LOG (2022). Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-96) was born in Cuba and grew up in Puerto Rico before moving to New York City. One of the most influential artists of his generation, Gonzalez-Torres lived and worked resolutely according to his own democratic ideology, determined to "make this a better place for everyone." Combining principles of conceptual art, minimalism, political activism and poetic beauty, his ever-changing arsenal included public billboards, give-away piles of candy or posters, and ordinary objects (clocks, mirrors, light fixtures) often used to startling effect. His work challenged the notions of public and private space, originality, authorship and-most significantly-the authoritative structure in which he functioned. Steidl published Felix Gonzalez-Torres in 2016.